L.A. trip not for roses, but what other blooms to see now?

carol6ma_7ari(zones 6 & 7a)February 5, 2012

Fellow old-rosers, I couldn't resist the low fare I got on short notice, so in spite of no roses around the Los Angeles area right now, I'll be flying in on Feb. 7 for a week of wearing T-shirts for a change. Yes, midwinter restlessness has got me and I had to get away. I can't do any gardening this month, anyway.

So I'd like your advice: what gardens and outdoor walks in mid-February do you recommend in L.A., Pasadena, Burbank, then up north maybe to the south part of the Bay Area? I know Huntington Library has camellias blooming, don't know where else to go and what to see.

Being from Dallas, I don't have the slightest, but think it's so neat you're getting away and doing your thing!! I used to live in San Francisco, there's so much to see, even if you don't see roses. Have fun!

Thanks, ogrose; but I'm hoping I'll hear a few suggestions from some of the rose people (who have just pruned their bushes, I think, so no roses to see) in the LA area. Soon, I hope. Because I'm leaving TOMORROW.

Yes Yes Yes to the Huntington. You don't want to miss the new Chinese Garden that was built based on one of the oldest and most loved classical gardens in China. They brought Chinese craftsmen and tons of Chinese stone for this and it is growing in nicely.

Also lovely is the new large greenhouse/conservatory

They are in prime camellia season right now

Descanso Gardens less than 30 minutes away has camellias as well and a large rose garden. Sometimes you can catch lightly pruned noisetters, hyb. musks, chinas, teas and others with a bloom here and there. I even saw an english rose or two last year this time and the odd OGR blooming on wood that was left unpruned. The daffodils around the rose garden are very pretty and they have other lovely seasonal plantings as well. Admission is relatively inexpensive.

If you can only see one, see the Chinese garden at the Huntington, it is the largest classical Chinese garden in the west.

I've always wanted to visit the Descanso Gardens myself, and will some day.

If you come up to the Bay Area as you said you might, you can visit Filoli in Woodside (English style garden), which is just opening back up on February 7th, the Hakone Garden (Japanese garden)in Saratoga, and maybe you could meet me for coffee! We missed meeting on your last trip. I'd suggest that you could come see my garden but all you'd see would be bare pruned roses bushes. To go on listing the delights that await you, in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park there is the Strybling Arboretum. and in Palo Alto, the (much smaller but quite nice) Gamble Garden. There would be a lot going on at Strybling. I don't know what there would be in February at the Gamble Garden and I don't see a bloom calendar on their site.

Thanks for the suggestions, rosefolly. Filoli I've visited, 2 years ago. And also the SF botanical gardens, the Berkeley Bot. Gardens, etcetera. I'll be in the east bay area for only a day and a half, seeing my son and d-i-l. Then it's back down I-5 to Pasadena, Burbank, the Descanso, the South Coast Bot. Gardens, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City; and stagger to the airport by next Monday night for the redeye, home. But I'll be back, as Governor Arnold S. says. Next time we'll meet. In rose season.

some bulbs are coming up now, I know my daffs are up... and also a lot of flowering pears (on the out) and flowering plums (at their peak in various areas... some will bloom later). :)
some places have gorgeous flowering magnolias right now (in the burbank area) and also in burbank... Tabebuia I think? those gorgeous purple trees.

Or the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont:http://www.rsabg.org/
(they have California native species roses, including multiple stands of R. minutifolia, sadly now extirpated in the wild in Calif.)--I was in their nursery the other day and they had 5 plants of R. minutifolia for sale.